LOS ANGELES—The “Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technology Act,” a United States Senate bill aimed at curtailing “sex trafficking” online — a bill that civil liberties experts say could damage online privacy, and could hit sex workers and the adult industry especially hard — died without a vote at the end of the previous two-year congressional session.
But the bill, better known as EARN IT, is set to make a comeback in the current 177th Congress, according to a report by Bloomberg News. The bill would roll back certain provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the internet free speech law that is considered the foundation of online communications — but which has been under attack from both sides of the political aisle over the past three years.
Section 230 itself is considered crucial to the online adult industry, because scaling it back or repealing it could open the door to censorship and even removal of internet platforms that contain sexually explicit content.
EARN IT was introduced in March of last year by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham — who was then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — and Democrat Richard Blumenthal. But despite receiving approval from the Judiciary Committee, setting up a vote of the full Senate, that full vote never came. Under congressional rules, all bills which fail to receive a vote by the end of a two-year term are then considered null and void.
But they may be formally reintroduced in a subsequent congressional session. According to what a Blumenthal spokesperson told Bloomberg, that is exactly what will happen with the EARN IT Act.
The bill would have to pass through the Judiciary Committee again, and that committee is now under Democratic control. But the new chair of the Judiciary Committee, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin — who in his position as majority whip is alse the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate — announced his support for the EARN IT Act last year.
“It’s time for Big Tech to step up efforts to combat the sexual exploitation of children online—and ensure that they actually earn liability protections from violations of the law on their platforms,” Durbin said in a tweet last year.
Section 230 now guarantees legal protection for online platforms over content posted by users. That freedom from liability allows platforms to allow a wide range of expression to find voice online, ensuring a robust array of opinions and topics to be freely shared and discussed.
But the EARN IT Act would now require platforms to “earn” many of the same protections that are now guaranteed, by following a vaguely defined set of “best practices” to prevent online sex trafficking. As with the 2018 FOSTA/SESTA law, however, platforms may be likely to simply eliminate all sexual content, to avoid any appearance of promoting “trafficking,” this depriving sex workers and the adult industry of their online voice, and venue to communicate.
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